Godel’s Contributions to Consciousness Part 1

Many of the cutting edge thinkers in consciousness studies refer back to Logician and Mathematician Kurt Godel. Examples include Douglas Hoffstadter, in his epic “Godel, Escher & Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.” David Chalmers in his “The Conscious Mind.” Roger Penrose in his trilogy of works on mind brain interaction. These three alone account for some of the most intriguing concepts in advanced ideas related to consciousness.

Each of them note that based upon Godel’s Theorem [subject of an upcoming entry], it is not possible, even theoretically, for the mechanical predictable aspects of the electical/chemical brain to account for all the qualities associated with “mind.” Godel predicted the limitations of artificial intelligence in digital computing that have proved to be quite accurate, at least to date. The limitations he suggested have remained solid for the nearly fifty years since his death.

The three above authors all attempt to restore as reductionistic and physically based a theory of concsiousness as possible, given the constraints of Godel’s Theorem. Chalmers and Penrose actually wrote that the limitations provided by Godel’s Theorem could imply a more idealistic or mystical philosophy, but they specifically chose to limit themselves to a more reductionistic explanation. I would support a more radical approach, approximating that of Amit Goswami, a physicist who wrote the rather stunning “The Self Aware Universe.”